Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a wide swath offset concrete screed for leveling poured concrete within a form, and more specifically systems and methods of making and using a wide swath concrete screed that doesn't require mechanical vibration.
Description of Related Art
Wet concrete generally arrives on-site in a concrete truck for pouring into the forms to define the desired level when the concrete dries. When the concrete is poured from the chute of the concrete truck the result is generally mounds of wet concrete—often called mud or slurry—piled above the level defined by the top edges of the forms. The slurry must be promptly leveled as it is poured, before it hardens or sets. Typically, the leveling is performed by a screed—a specialized tool that traverses the forms. Smaller pours such as a sidewalk can be leveled with a hand screed that one or more workers drag along the forms to level the mounds of wet concrete. It is not feasible to use hand screeds for larger pours such as parking lots, road surfaces, the floors of buildings or other such large, flat concrete surfaces. The weight of the concrete being pulled off is generally too great for workers to use hand screeds.
Larger concrete projects must be poured in strips that may be ten to twenty feet wide, but can even be thirty or more feet wide. Conventional mechanized concrete screeds are used to level the strips of concrete. One such type of conventional mechanized screed involves the use of a vibrating screed. A small gasoline engine is mounted on the screed with a rotating offset weight designed to impart vibration to the screed as it is dragged across the wet mud. Some conventional vibrating screed implementations require one or more workers just outside the forms to push and guide the screed along the top of the forms as the engine vibrates the screed. The vibration is required to prevent small pebbles from momentarily catching on the front edge of the screed and dragging small holes in the surface of the slurry before the pebble finally passes under the screed. The vibration aids in pushing the small pebbles down into the slurry, allowing the conventional vibrating screed to pass over the pebbles with minimal perturbation to the surface of the wet concrete. A gasoline or diesel engine is required for this conventional solution, thus requiring one or more workers to attend to the engine as the device is started and stopped many times during the course of a day's pouring. Due to the dirt and dust present at the work site it can be difficult to keep the conventional vibrating screed from breaking down during a pour, often necessitating emergency repairs to keep pouring while concrete trucks are standing by ready to unload their wet concrete.
Published U.S. Patent Application 2009/0092444A1 to Schoen (hereinafter “Schoen”) describes a conventional wide swath motorized screeds. The Schoen screed features a screed mechanism attached to a skid loader that a worker operates to pull the mounds of wet concrete and create a level surface. Another implementation of a conventional mechanical screed involves attaching a conventional vibrating screed to a front end loader or skid loader. Mounting a conventional vibrating screed on a front end loader eliminates the need for concrete workers to push the screed along as it vibrates.